Monday, April 19, 2010

For those of us who have been in the EDI and SAP ecosystem for many years, it is interesting to ponder how it has changed. EDI vendors used to see supporting SAP and SAP IDocs as a sign of maturity, and SAP welcomed all EDI vendors into the SAP ecosystem. Today, however, most of the legacy EDI vendors are competing directly against SAP which changes the dynamics of these relationships.

Take a moment to review the following list of application categories that legacy EDI vendors are now offering:

Supply Chain Management

Transportation Management/Logistics Management

Global Trade

Order Management

Product and Price Management

Catalog Management

Supplier Web Portals

Inventory Management

Finance

Master Data Management

Enterprise Application Integration solutions

With these product offerings, traditional EDI vendors have chosen to compete against SAP in nearly every category. It is not hard to understand why SAP has recently chosen to offer its own managed EDI service called the SAP Information Interchange. SAP would rather displace the traditional EDI vendors from their customer base as they are considered direct competitors nowadays that have limited interest in supporting SAP's strategies, architectures, and future product roadmaps.